Deadly Dayrocks Israel

2 Bombings, 5 Shootings Leave Mideast On Edge

In Northern Israel: A Bomb Goes Off, Killing At Least 9 People On A Packed Bus During Sunday-morning Rush Hour.

In Jerusalem: Israeli Policeexchange Fire With A Palestinian Man Who Shot Dead An Israeli In A Telephone-company Truck.

In The West Bank: Early Today, 2 Israelis Are Shot Dead In An Ambush On Their Car. Two Of Their Children Are Wounded.

August 5, 2002|By Christine Spolar, Foreign Correspondent

JERUSALEM -- Israel reeled from a series of Palestinian attacks Sunday, including a bus bomb in the north and a shooting just outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City.

The violence -- two bombings and five shootings -- occurred with unnerving regularity Sunday and left 17 people dead and scores wounded.

About 8:45 a.m., a bomb ripped apart a crowded bus traveling from Haifa along a remote area near the Sea of Galilee. At least nine civilians and soldiers died in a blast so powerful that large chunks of the bus flew off, witnesses said. An additional 47 people were injured, police said.

Authorities still were investigating Sunday whether the bus attack, near Tsfat, was the work of a suicide bomber. Army officials said they thought a suicide attacker was to blame, but as of late Sunday, they were unable to confirm that.

Three hours after the bus bomb, a Palestinian gunman charged into an intersection near Jerusalem's Damascus Gate in an Arab neighborhood and fired a pistol five times into the cab of an Israeli telephone-company truck, killing one man and seriously wounding another.

Israeli police quickly targeted the gunman, witnesses said, spraying bullets across a busy market area to shoot him dead. A Palestinian in a nearby cafe was killed, and at least six people were seen moments after the noontime gunbattle streaked with blood and staggering from wounds to their legs and arms.

About 11/2 hours later, four Israelis were wounded in the northern West Bank when gunfire hit a car traveling near Tulkarem, between the settlements of Avnei Hefetz and Einav, according to Israel Radio.

Another 11/2 hours later, four Israeli soldiers were wounded, three of them seriously, when a roadside bomb damaged their jeep near an Israeli military base outside the West Bank city of Ramallah.

In the Gaza Strip, a 22-year-old Palestinian man dressed in a wet suit was shot and killed when soldiers caught him coming ashore along the Mediterranean coast near the Jewish settlements of Dugit and Alei Sinai, according to an army report. He was reportedly armed with an automatic rifle and grenades.

In the northern West Bank, three Israelis were wounded in a shooting ambush, according to a spokesmen for the Jewish settlers. Two of the wounded were soldiers and one was a civilian, he said.

The bloodshed continued after midnight.

Gunmen opened fire on a car in the West Bank early today, killing an Israeli couple and wounding two of their children, the military said. The ambush took place on the main road through the West Bank, between Ramallah and Nablus.

Also today, Israeli troops fatally shot two Palestinians, including a fugitive local chief of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, in the village of Borqa north of Nablus, relatives said.

A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Sunday that the new attacks scuttled plans for talks planned later this week with the Palestinians on security and easing hardships in West Bank cities under curfew.

"What have you got to talk [about] with a Palestinian leadership that continues to harbor and support terrorist activity?" spokesman Raanan Gissin asked.

The Palestinian leadership condemned the bombing, but also accused Sharon of "war crimes" for the Israeli army's mass detentions, home demolitions and curfews imposed on Palestinians.

President Bush, on vacation in Maine, denounced the attacks Sunday as the act of "a few killers who want to stop the peace process." Two high-profile militant groups claimed responsibility for the barrage of violence.

The Islamic militant group Hamas claimed it was behind the bus bomb in northern Israel and the apprehended swimmer in Gaza. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a military faction of Arafat's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the deadly shooting in Jerusalem and Sunday' attacks in the West Bank.

By Sunday night, thousands of Palestinians were marching through the center of Gaza City, waving Hamas banners and celebrating the second large-scale assault in four days by the militant group. Last week, Hamas claimed responsibility for a bombing at Hebrew University that killed seven people, among them five Americans.

Hamas, in a statement Sunday, vowed to continue its attacks until all Jews leave Israel. "We decided to target you everywhere," according to the statement released by the military wing, Ez Eldim Qassam. "In your universities, schools, associations, markets and anyplace you gather. Your army did not leave any other choice for us."

The Ez Eldim Qassam said the bus attack was in retaliation for what it called Israeli aggression. It listed Israel's assassination July 22 of Hamas military leader Sheik Salah Shehadeh and repeated attacks throughout Gaza. It also faulted a U.N. report, released last week, which rejected allegations that the Israeli army had massacred Palestinians during an incursion in the West Bank town of Jenin this spring.